The following images were taken with a Sony Alpha DSLR-A300 running version 1.0 firmware and fitted with the Sony DT 18-70mm kit lens. Sony has asked us to describe this unit as pre-production, although supplied in retail packaging and running Firmware version 1.0, we’re confident the output is close or even identical to what you’ll get with final production units. We will update this page with samples from a retail A300 when one becomes available.

The A300 was set to Large Fine JPEG quality, Auto White Balance, Multi-segment metering and Standard Colour mode. High ISO NR and the D-Range Optimiser were set to their default On and Standard settings respectively. Super SteadyShot was enabled for all handheld shots here.

The crops are taken from the original files, reproduced at 100% and saved in
Adobe Photoshop CS2 as JPEGs with the default Very High quality preset, while
the resized images were made in Photoshop CS2 and saved with the default High
quality preset. The three crops are typically taken from far left, central and
far right portions of each image.

Our next shot was taken of an approaching boat. The lens was zoomed-into its maximum focal length, the AF set to continuous and the sensitivity increased to 200 ISO.

The A300's AF tracked the approaching boat with no problems.

Despite bright sunlight shining against a predominantly white hull, the A300 resisted the temptation to under-expose and (unlike the A350) the increase in sensitivity hasn't had a detrimental impact on quality.

For this macro shot we increased the sensitivity to 400 ISO and positioned the camera as close at it would focus with the kit lens fully zoomed-in.

We shot his in Program mode, but a larger depth of field could have been achieved in Aperture Priority.

The increase to 400 ISO hasn't had an adverse effect of the quality, with the crops revealing lots of detail and little noise or processing artefacts to speak of - although this subject can be forgiving.